Stone by Stone

Recently I've been preoccupied into "head-above-water" mode. I'm somewhat exhausted by everything I'm doing, but I'm also exhilarated: there is an overwhelming, if complicated, sense of relief in being absolutely overtaken by the things that excite me. The past few weeks have been a time of reading, of writing, of watching, of listening, of exploring, of talking. Sufficient time doesn't exist for all of it. I feel as though, maybe, I'm beginning to seize my own agency once again.

Thanks for being a part of that in reading this.

- "Rio Grande" by Ikebe Shakedown, from Stone by Stone (2014)

Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers

The title says it all.

- Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers by Les Blank (1980)

Con Flores

- "Nuesta Canción" by Monsieur Periné, from Caja de Música (2015) 

Beans and Fog and Other Things

- "Kimberly" by Patti Smith, from Horses (1975)

Will-O'-the-Wisp

This spring, I'm taking a poetry class at UMKC. The course itself isn't too bad, but I have a really hard time encouraging myself to do the homework after spending all day at my job. That said, I'm glad I have a healthy and productive reason to be solitary. I just wish there were more hours in the day to do everything I love. If there were a way to slow the world's spin, I'd be in full support of making our days 27 hours long.

I'm trying to do some homework now before leaving for work, so I'll keep this to a few photos from this weekend, when I went to a pretty park. When I have the energy and consideration, I'll piece together a reflection on everything I observed in D.C. last weekend. For now, these careless vignettes must suffice.

Thank you for reading this!

Minor Park, South Kansas City, Missouri.

Dancing, Asleep

The Suddenly Tangible Gravity of a Small Body on This Middle-Sized Planet

Westport High

Why Try to Change Me Now?

- "Why Try to Change Me Now?" written by Cy Coleman and Joseph McCarthy; performed by Honi Gordon, from Honi Gordon Sings (1962)

Having a Coke with You

"Having a Coke with You"

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles 

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them 

I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse 

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it

by Frank O'Hara, originally published in 1960

- Frank O'Hara reading the poem in his apartment in 1966, taken from the film USA: Poetry, Frank O'Hara